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terça-feira, 28 de junho de 2011

Major Asteroid or Comet Impact @TopicfireNews

http://t.co/ck7ohgM via @TopicfireNews Past Due? On an Average of Every One Million Years, Earth Absorbs a Major Asteroid or Comet Impact




A house-sized asteroid zipped apst Earth yesteday closer than the moon. Stephen Hawking believes that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with inhabited planets. Through Earth's history such collisions occur, on the average every one million years. If this figure is correct, it would mean that intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no major collisions in the last 70 million years. Other planets in the galaxy, Hawking believes, on which life has developed, may not have had a long enough collision free period to evolve intelligent beings.

We have observed, Hawking points out in Life in the Universe, the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter, which produced a series of enormous fireballs, plumes many thousands of kilometers high, hot "bubbles" of gas in the atmosphere, and large dark "scars" on the atmosphere which had lifetimes on the order of weeks.

It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth, about 70 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. A few small early mammals survived, but anything as large as a human, would have almost certainly been wiped out.

“The threat of the Earth being hit by an asteroid is increasingly being accepted as the single greatest natural disaster hazard faced by humanity,” according to Nick Bailey of the University of Southampton's School of Engineering Sciences team, who has developed a threat identifying program.[ Image: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collision with Jupiter]

The team used raw data from multiple impact simulations to rank each country based on the number of times and how severely they would be affected by each impact. The software, called NEOimpactor (from NASA's "NEO" or Near Earth Object program), has been specifically developed for measuring the impact of 'small' asteroids under one kilometer in diameter.

Early results indicate that in terms of population lost, China, Indonesia, India, Japan and the United States face the greatest overall threat; while the United States, China, Sweden, Canada and Japan face the most severe economic effects due to the infrastructure destroyed.

The top ten countries most at risk are China, Indonesia, India, Japan, the United States, the Philippines, Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Nigeria.

“The consequences for human populations and infrastructure as a result of an impact are enormous,” says Bailey. “Nearly one hundred years ago a remote region near the Tunguska River witnessed the largest asteroid impact event in living memory when a relatively small object (approximately 50 meters in diameter) exploded in mid-air. While it only flattened unpopulated forest, had it exploded over London it could have devastated everything within the M25. Our results highlight those countries that face the greatest risk from this most global of natural hazards and thus indicate which nations need to be involved in mitigating the threat.”

What would happen to the human species and life on Earth in general if an asteroid the size of the one that created the famous K/T Event of 65 million years ago at the end of the Mesozoic Era that resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs impacted our planet.

As Stephen Hawking says, the general consensus is that any comet or asteroid greater than 20 kilometers in diameter that strikes the Earth will result in the complete annihilation of complex life - animals and higher plants. (The asteroid Vesta, for example, one of the destinations of the Dawn Mission, is the size of Arizona).

How many times in our galaxy alone has life finally evolved to the equivalent of our planets and animals on some far distant planet, only to be utterly destroyed by an impact? Galactic history suggests it might be a common occurrence.

The first this to understand about the KT event is that is was absolutely enormous: an asteroid (or comet) six to 10 miles in diameter streaked through the Earth's atmosphere at 25,000 miles an hour and struck the Yucatan region of Mexico with the force of 100 megatons -the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb for every person alive on Earth today. Not a pretty scenario!

Recent calculations show that our planet would go into another "Snowball Earth" event like the one that occurred 600 million years ago, when it is believed the oceans froze over (although some scientists dispute this hypothesis -see link below).

While microbial bacteria might readily survive such calamitous impacts, our new understanding from the record of the Earth's mass extinctions clearly shows that plants and animals are very susceptible to extinction in the wake of an impact.

Impact rates depend on how many comets and asteroids exist in a particular planetary system. In general there is one major impact every million years -a mere blink of the eye in geological time. It also depends on how often those objects are perturbed from safe orbits that parallel the Earth's orbit to new, Earth-crossing orbits that might, sooner or later, result in a catastrophic K/T or Permian-type mass extinction.

The asteroid that hit Vredefort located in the Free State Province of South Africa is one of the largest to ever impact Earth, estimated at over 10 km (6 miles) wide, although it is believed by many that the original size of the impact structure could have been 250 km in diameter, or possibly larger(though the Wilkes Land crater in Antarctica, if confirmed to have been the result of an impact event, is even larger at 500 kilometers across). The town of Vredefort is situated in the crater (image).

Dating back 2,023 million years, it is the oldest astrobleme found on earth so far, with a radius of 190km, it is also the most deeply eroded. Vredefort Dome Vredefort bears witness to the world’s greatest known single energy release event, which caused devastating global change, including, according to many scientists, major evolutionary changes.

What has kept the Earth "safe" at least the past 65 million years, other than blind luck is the massive gravitational field of Jupiter, our cosmic guardian, with its stable circular orbit far from the sun, which assures a low number of impacts resulting in mass extinctions by sweeping up and scatters away most of the dangerous Earth-orbit-crossing comets and asteroids

The Daily Galaxy via University of Southampton and rationalvedanta.net

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What's to blame for wild weather? 'La Nada'

What's to blame for wild weather? 'La Nada' http://t.co/i2xOju9 via @BreakingScience



http://www.physorg.com/

The blue and purple band in this satellite image of the Pacific Ocean traces the cool waters of the La Niña phenomenon in December 2010. Credit: Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 satellite, NASA JPL

(PhysOrg.com) -- Record snowfall, killer tornadoes, devastating floods: There’s no doubt about it. Since Dec. 2010, the weather in the USA has been positively wild. But why?


http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-blame-wild-weather-la-nada.html


Some recent news reports have attributed the phenomenon to an extreme "La Niña," a band of cold water stretching across the Pacific Ocean with global repercussions for climate and weather. But NASA climatologist Bill Patzert names a different suspect: "La Nada."

"La Niña was strong in December," he says. "But back in January it pulled a disappearing act and left us with nothing – La Nada – to constrain the jet stream. Like an unruly teenager, the jet stream took advantage of the newfound freedom--and the results were disastrous."

La Niña and El Niño are opposite extremes of a great Pacific oscillation. Every 2 to 7 years, surface waters across the equatorial Pacific warm up (El Niño) and then they cool down again (La Niña). Each condition has its own distinct effects on weather.


This satellite image, taken in April 2011, reveals La Niña's rapid exit from the equator near the US coast. The cool (false-color blue) water was gone by early spring. Credit: Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 satellite, NASA JPL

The winter of 2010 began with La Niña conditions taking hold. A "normal" La Niña would have pushed the jet stream northward, pushing cold arctic air (one of the ingredients of severe weather) away from the lower US. But this La Niña petered out quickly, and no El Niño rose up to replace it. The jet stream was free to misbehave.

"By mid-January 2011, La Niña weakened rapidly and by mid-February it was 'adios La Niña,' allowing the jet stream to meander wildly around the US. Consequently the weather pattern became dominated by strong outbreaks of frigid polar air, producing blizzards across the West, Upper Midwest, and northeast US."

The situation lingered into spring -- and things got ugly. Russell Schneider, Director of the NOAA-NWS Storm Prediction Center, explains: "First, very strong winds out of the south carrying warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico met cold jet stream winds racing in from the west. Stacking these two air masses on top of each other created the degree of instability that fuels intense thunderstorms."

Extreme contrasts in wind speeds and directions of the upper and lower atmosphere transformed ordinary thunderstorms into long-lived rotating supercells capable of producing violent tornadoes.

In Patzert's words, "The jet stream -- on steroids -- acted as an atmospheric mix master, causing tornadoes to explode across Dixie and Tornado Alleys, and even into Massachusetts."


All this because of a flaky La Niña?

"La Niña and El Niño affect the atmosphere's energy balance because they determine the location of warm water in the Pacific, and that in turn determines where huge clusters of tropical thunderstorms form," explains Schneider. "These storms are the main energy source from the tropics influencing the large scale pattern of the jet stream that flows through the US."

In agreement with Patzert, he notes that the very strong and active jet stream across the lower US in April "may have been related to the weakening La Niña conditions observed over the tropical Pacific."

And of course there's this million dollar question: "Does any research point to climate change as a cause of this wild ?"

"Global warming is certainly happening," asserts Patzert, "but we can't discount global warming or blame it for the 2011 tornado season. We just don't know ... Yet."

What will happen next? And please don't say, "La Nada."

Provided by Science@NASA


domingo, 26 de junho de 2011

@tveitdal Climate Change: It's bad and getting worse


Severe weather events are wracking the planet, and experts warn of even greater consequences to come.


Climate Change: It's bad and getting worse
Severe weather events are wracking the planet, and experts warn of even greater consequences to come.
Last Modified: 23 Jun 2011 07:46



The rate of ice loss in two of Greenland's largest glaciers has increased so much in the last 10 years that the amount of melted water would be enough to completely fill Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes in North America.

West Texas is currently undergoing its worst drought since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, leaving wheat and cotton crops in the state in an extremely dire situation due to lack of soil moisture, as wildfires continue to burn.

Central China recently experienced its worst drought in more than 50 years. Regional authorities have declared more than 1,300 lakes "dead", meaning they are out of use for both irrigation and drinking water supply.

Floods have struck Eastern and Southern China, killing at least 52 and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands, followed by severe flooding that again hit Eastern China, displacing or otherwise affecting five million people.

Meanwhile in Europe, crops in the northwest are suffering the driest weather in decades.

Scientific research confirms that, so far, humankind has raised the Earth's temperature, and the aforementioned events are a sign of what is to come.

"If you had a satellite view of the planet in the summer, there is about 40 per cent less ice in the Arctic than when Apollo 8 [in 1968] first sent back those photos [of Earth]," Bill McKibben, world renowned environmentalist and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences told Al Jazeera, "Oceans are 30 per cent more acidic than they were 40 years ago. The atmosphere is four per cent more wet than 40 years ago because warm air holds more water than cold air. That means more deluge and downpour in wet areas and more dryness in dry areas. So we're seeing more destructive mega floods and storms, increasing thunderstorms, and increasing lightning strikes."

So far human greenhouse gas emissions have raised the temperature of the planet by one degree Celsius.

"Climatologists tell us unless we get off gas, coal, and oil, that number will be four to five degrees before the end of this century," said McKibben, "If one degree is enough to melt the Arctic, we'd be best not to hit four degrees."

Climate change is bad for you

Brian Schwartz is a professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"Increasing temperatures cause direct health effects related to heat; there will be more common events like the 30,000 to 50,000 persons who died in Europe in 2003 due to the heat wave there," Professor Schwartz told Al Jazeera, "Increasing temperatures also cause more air pollution, due to photochemical reactions that increase with higher temperatures. This will cause more morbidity and mortality from pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases."

Schwartz, who is also the co-director of the Programme on Global Sustainability and Health, said that lack of clean water, a phenomenon that is also a product of climate change, will lead to increases in morbidity and mortality from a variety of water-borne diseases.

In addition, vector-borne diseases, diseases in which the pathogenic microorganism is transmitted from an infected individual to another individual by an arthropod or other agent, will change in their distribution as the climate changes.

"Populations will be on the move as food and water production is threatened; these so-called environmental refugees, that the world has already seen, suffer a variety of increased health risks," added Schwartz, "How climate change affects economies and sociopolitical systems will contribute to other physical and mental health stresses for populations."

Professor Cindy Parker co-directs the Programme on Global Environmental Sustainability and Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and is the Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Environment, Energy, Sustainability, and Health Institute.

Like Professor Schwartz, she also sees an increase in vector-borne diseases as climate change progresses.

"Infectious diseases carried by insects, like malaria, Lyme disease, Dengue fever, these are all expected to worsen," Parker told Al Jazeera, "These diseases will likely worsen, like malaria, at higher elevations in virgin populations who've not developed resistance to these diseases, so there will be greater effect on these populations."

She believes that diseases that have yet to arise will begin to develop as the planet continues warming. "The biggest threat is the disease we're not yet expecting, but that will develop and we'll be ill equipped to handle."

Parker fears other far-reaching health impacts resulting from our heating up of the planet.

"Everything that affects our environment affects our health," Parker said, "As fancy as our technology is, we still cannot live without clean water, air, and food, and we rely on our environment for these."

This fact is primarily why she believes that climate change is the most health-damaging problem humanity has ever faced.

Parker cited Hurricane Katrina that struck New Orleans in 2005, killing nearly 2,000 and pegged as the costliest natural disaster in US history, as a weather warning example.

"If you look at the health impacts on the Gulf of Mexico's population that was impacted by the storm, mental health illnesses are much worse than the rest of country, chronic illnesses are greater, mostly because trauma has great effects on our psyches and physical bodies," she explained, "But also because prior to Katrina there were seven hospitals in New Orleans, and now there are 2.5 hospitals operating. Those that were lost didn't come back. They are gone."

Hurricane Katrina also caused job loss, which led to loss of health insurance, which led to peoples' health indicators worsening.

"Homelessness is a big contributor, and these problems are still going on, people have not recovered," Parker continued, "And with extreme weather events around the world, there are these huge health effects which persist."

Parker is concerned about what the future has in store for us if climate change continues unabated, as it currently appears to be doing, given that most governments continue to fail to implement an actionable plan to avert it.

"People think technology is going to save us from climate change, but there is no technology on the horizon that will allow us to adapt ourselves out of this mess," Parker said, "We can physiologically adapt to higher temperatures, but all that adaptation is not going to save us unless we also get the climate stabilised."

"If this continues unabated this planet will not be habitable by the species that are on it, including humans," she concluded, "It will be a very different planet. One that is not very conducive to human life."

Global overpopulation

"The rule of thumb is that every degree increase in temperature decreases the wheat harvest by 10 per cent," said McKibben, speaking about the effect climate change has on global food production, "Food cost has increased between 70 and 80 per cent in the last year for basic grains. For millions around the world, they are already affected by not having enough."

Another important factor that contributes to climate change is global overpopulation. The UN has set October 31 of this year as the date the Earth's population is expected to surpass seven billion people.

The world's population is growing by roughly 80 million people per year, and at the current rates of birth and death, the world's population is on a trajectory to double in 49 years.

William Ryerson is the president of the Population Institute, a non-profit organisation that works to educate policymakers and the public about population, and the need to achieve a world population that is in balance with a healthy global environment and resource base.

"The projected growth rate is 9.3 billion by 2050," Ryerson told Al Jazeera, "The additional 2.5 billion [onto our current 6.8 billion] is the climate equivalent to adding two USA's to the planet. Even though most of those people are in low greenhouse gas emitting countries, the sheer number of people adds to a huge impact on the environment."

Ryerson pointed out that countries like China and the US have higher consumption and emissions, and as their populations grow, their impacts are even greater than in less developed countries.

Overpopulation also strains already overstretched water resources.

"We have 225,000 people at the dinner table tonight who weren't there last night, so to maintain our current population we're already over-pumping underground aquifers," added Ryerson, "India is over-pumping, and we have over 100 million people in India dependent on over-pumping, so this can't be sustained. And climate change is making this all even more untenable, as the glaciers in the Himalayas that provide water for India and China are melting rapidly."

Unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently revealed that greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year to the highest carbon output in history, despite the most serious economic recession in 80 years.

This means that the aim of holding global temperatures to safe levels are now all but out of reach. The goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than two degrees Celsius, which scientists say is the threshold for potentially "dangerous climate change" is now most likely just "a nice Utopia", according to Fatih Birol, a chief economist of the IEA.

"Population is the multiplier of everything else," explained Ryerson, who believes climate change cannot adequately be addressed until the overpopulation problem is solved.

"Clearly the current number of people and per capita behaviour is unsustainable and this is obvious in what has happened to the climate already," he said, "There are severe consequences already. And the cost of solving this problem of overpopulation is small compared to the cost of solving climate change as it progresses."

Long Road Ahead

McKibben is deeply concerned about what he sees when he looks into the future of what we should expect with climate change.

"We're going to keep seeing increased amounts of these extreme kinds of droughts, floods, and storms," he said, "Everything that happens that isn't volcanic or tectonic draws its power from the sun and we are getting more of everything by amping up the sun's power in the atmosphere by adding more CO2."

Ryerson sees a bleak future for water-starved countries like Saudi Arabia.

"Saudi Arabia has announced that the water they've been depending on, their underground aquifer for crops and drinking, will be gone by 2020," he explained, "They are dependent on imports, and can pay for it now, but in the future when oil declines, that country faces a serious issue of sustainability."

He is also concerned about increasing biodiversity loss.

"The key issue is the large populations of plants and animals that make the planet inhabitable," Ryerson explained, "We need oxygen to breathe and water to drink. A three billion year evolution of plants and animals have made the planet habitable, and we are systematically destroying this biodiversity by plowing, cutting, and burning areas."

Ryerson believes ongoing demand for products and the encroachment on wilderness areas this causes "will make life on the planet much more difficult. All of this together means the future of humanity, even with assumed innovation, has some very serious concerns. None of these problems are made easier by adding more people. The only way to achieve sustainability is to hold population growth, and have it decline."

McKibben says everybody should be adopting an emergency response geared towards ending our reliance on fossil fuels.

"This will only be done if we charge carbon for the damage it does in the atmosphere," he said, "The power of the fossil fuel companies is the power to keep us from doing that. As long as our governments won't stand up to that industry, I'm afraid we've got a long road ahead of us."

Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail


read more:

sábado, 25 de junho de 2011

climate change: 146 reasons for optimism "Optimist's Diary"

"Diary of the climatic optimum" - (With daily updates).


01 - Earthquake and Tsunami in Haiti, with the known consequences, and unpredictable geological ...

02 - Earthquake in Chile, followed by tsunami, with the known consequences and unpredictable geological ...

03 - Earthquake in New Zealand, with the known geological and unpredictable consequences ...

04 - Earthquake in Japan, followed by a devastating tsunami, radioactive leak at nuclear power plants, with the known consequences, and geologically unpredictable ...

05 - Heat wave in Russia and Argentina, with unknown origin and consequences ...

06 - Catastrophic floods in Pakistan, with known consequences ...

07 - Floods in China with the destruction of agricultural fields and crop losses ...

08 - Floods in the Philippines ...

09 - Urban landslides in the mountainous region, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ...

10 - An eruption of a volcano in Ecuador air causing chaos ...

11 - Eruption of the volcano in Iceland, triggering chaos in Europe by air ...

12 - Volcano eruption in Chile air causing chaos, tourism and urban living in areas affected by ash ...

13 - An eruption of a volcano in the Philippines ...

14 - Blizzards U.S., and Europe, causing huge financial losses and loss of life ...

15 - Sandstorms in Iran ..

16 - Overflow of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, U.S. ...

17 - Hurricane in New Orleans, U.S., with the known consequences ...

18 - Catastrophic floods in the state of Roraima, in Brazil, rising by more than ten meters, the level of Rivers ...

19 - Swarm of tornadoes, U.S., ...

20 - Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, due to explosion of an oil drilling platform, and environmental consequences of causes unknown ...

21 - Indifference and unbelief global public authorities ...

22 - Indifference and skepticism from the public, even in the face of the facts listed above ...

23 - Rising food prices around the Earth ....

24 - Rising sea levels ....

25 - Oxidation of the oceans ....

26 - Melting glaciers ...

27 - Mass extinction of marine species ...

28 - High emission of CO2 in the atmosphere ...

29 - Destruction of the latest global forest reserves ...

30 - Exhaustion of the last natural reserves of fresh water ...

31 - Exhaustion of the capacity to produce food to feed a population of nine billion people ...

32 - Swarm of forest fires in Portugal in Portugal and Australia ...

33 - Death Toll massive fish, birds and bees in different regions of the Earth, of unknown causes ...

34 - Floods in Venezuela ...





39 - RT @Earth_News A Region With Big Climate Vulnerability and Bigger Distractions http://t.co/b1xrl62 @nytimes

40 -@pdjmoo The New Geopolitics of Food http://t.co/agA6AU0

41 - @guardianeco Al Gore's rallying call: 'Climate crisis is a struggle for the soul of America' http://gu.com/p/3v4fm/tf

42 - Botswana's brink of catastrophe @guardian... http://t.co/3BuHgaG

43 - @Guardianeco #Climate Change: 2100 or 2010? http://t.co/VvSdyNJ

44 - @EcoInteractive #Brazil's shame http://t.co/40UypUC

45 - Moving liquefied ground by 3.11Earthquake in Japan... http://t.co/jCuqsjY

46 - @DianeN56: Thousands Flee Rising Missouri River: http://lat.ms/http://lat.ms/lXESh3 RT @lisduarte RT @timrote

47 - Poor & global warming @Earth_News @guardian http://t.co/GPmU2h2




























75 - : Outstanding report from NYT: It's not just environmental impacts co.'s are lying about.

76 - @tveitdal Climate Change: It's bad and getting worse... http://t.co/I4D0a0f

77 - What's to blame for wild weather? 'La Nada' http://t.co/i2xOju9via@BreakingScience

78 - http://t.co/ck7ohgM via @TopicfireNews Past Due? On an Average of Every One Million Years, Earth Absorbs a Major Asteroid or Comet Impact

79 - #UniverseToday Apocalyptic Time-Lapse Video of Massive Phoenix Dust Storm: http://bit.ly/opAPX7 RT @universetoday

80 - World War II bombing raids offer new insight into the effects of aviation on climate http://t.co/H0V8Jkt via @TopicfireNews

81 - Are We Prepared for a Catastrophic Solar Storm?http://t.co/vJcq4tI via @BreakingScience

82 - New force driving Earth's tectonic plates @BreakingScience... http://t.co/8eyiGuQ

83 - Massive Volcanic Event via @TopicfireNews http://t.co/KIVYNPt

84 - @EcoInteractive Scientists warn of massive ocean extinctions http://t.co/4UIcXI0 ~ #Wildlife #Conservation #Biodiversity #Oceans

85 - @NHillgarth Flooding of Ancient Salton Sea Linked to San Andreas Earthquakes http://t.co/tnBp0L8

86 - Another Iceland volcano, causing flooding: @FRANCE24 ..http://t.co/4lJHdNr

87 - @FRANCE24 Another Iceland volcano stirs, causing flooding: official http://t.co/6pUh8E7

88 - Preparing for the 100 Year Storm and Wondering if the Three Simultaneous Nuclear Crises are an Accident?http://t.co/he8dcv3 via @bigthink

89 - Is there intelligent life on Planet Earth? http://t.co/Sh3u3gQ

90 - @climateprogress Chicago Tribune Proud to be 75% Accurate on Climate Change http://t.co/cPgISzK

91 - @ClimateTreaty Climate change is cause of Ethiopian drought http://t.co/Oql8DJM

92 - Big Siberian Snows Signal Cold U.S. Winters, Research Finds - http://t.co/EzmrOjBAnother Iceland volcano, causing flooding: @FRANCE24 ..http://t.co/4lJHdNr

93 - 40 #earthquake, Kermadec Islands region!!!! only in the last 72 hours, and nothing is happening Planet Earth??????..http://t.co/z3g07nD

94 - Environment: a question of "σοφία" << http://t.co/aoHjsU6

95 - "Trojan Horse, modern!" http://t.co/dXW7zVc

96 - #Climate, Water and Food: a “deadly link”. http://t.co/Sqpvh7Q

97 - Death of Reason << http://t.co/zLkzE5Z

98 - LETTER IN DEFENSE OF THE ENVIRONMENT << http://t.co/Qb1KQu0

99 - The environment is global security! http://t.co/4uui6pK

100 - Equation of global warming - part 02 - http://t.co/00RSxew

101 - Signs not decode... http://t.co/00omN5b -

102 - Important lessons from the tragedy in #Japan http://t.co/GSspqHD

103 - Moving liquefied ground by 3.11Earthquake in Japan... http://t.co/jCuqsjY

104 - Japan: Geological Future http://t.co/nBhf1o6

105 - Japanuclear: where there's smoke there's fire! http://t.co/8EHWknp

106 - Tectonic and #Japan Nuclear. http://t.co/DX8NAiJ

107 - Climate and geological changes, "Alea Jacta est!" http://t.co/xhdfzj9

108 - Climate and #Geological changes: Apocalypse now? http://t.co/qX2tXZI

109 - The Climate Egg & Chicken Geological http://t.co/5UBVsNz

110 - Key question! http://t.co/wJZcKt2

111 - Parts of the "Puzzle" global ... http://t.co/fj43OCy

112 - Climate Refugees (2010-2020) http://t.co/FsDXufu

113 - The price of indifference! http://t.co/T9uO0Iz

114 - Silence: The Earth is talking! http://t.co/o457HG6

115 - "Trade of illusions" & geological and climate change... http://t.co/pG1ckpu

116 - Battle of Armagendom: Environmentalists and Skeptics.. http://t.co/MDckOSU

117 - Worst drought in 60 years brings starvation fears to East Africa ~

118 - Guardian: Scientists finally get angry about indifference to climate change

119 - Updated: CCC urges Scotland to adopt tough climate change targets

120 - Swiss Re Warns Europe of Increasing ‘Soil Subsidence’ from Climate Change

121 - The Ultimate Green Twitter Hashtag List: Build Your Online Green Twitter Following

122 - Svein Tveitdal
by ruisaldanha
123 - Svein Tveitdal
by ruisaldanha
124 - Olav Kjorven
by ruisaldanha
125 - Reading - Rush for Arctic's resources provokes territorial tussles

126 - SaldanhaVerdeAmarelo
@
127 - Svein Tveitdal
by ruisaldanha
128 - Svein Tveitdal
by ruisaldanha
129 - Svein Tveitdal
by ruisaldanha
130 - Svein Tveitdal
by ruisaldanha
131 - U.N. Security Council to Take Up Climate Change

132 - ABCnews: Arctic ice melting fast change

133 - CICERO: Det er grunn til å tro at solas aktivitet vil avta de neste årene. Dette vil i tilfelle ha en svak

134 - Climate change will threaten Britain's national security by causing wars, mass migration and food shortages

135 - Scientists tie Colorado River flooding to San Andreas quakes http://t.co/BMRRKQ9 via @BreakingScience

136 - Ocean's carbon dioxide uptake reduced by climate change - http://t.co/NvvFdVL via @BreakingScience

137 - Is ocean garbage killing whales? http://t.co/YahWRON via @BreakingScience


138 - @Earth_News Heat wave lingers, submerges U.S. in sizzling temperatures - http://t.co/oLJSpyI @reuters

139 - @VancouverSun Horn of Africa drought to worsen: UNICEF - http://t.co/X7xYCj4

140 - @pdjmoo 2011 Significant Earthquake and News Headlines - http://t.co/eShJcG0

141 - @bobdesa64 @DrBobBullard: Global Warming: Harsh Reality Strikes America, #climatechange - Christian News - http://t.co/PnVHLzp

142 -What is the Destiny of Mankind? - http://t.co/powV6MY

143 - "The Inferno (hell) of Dante" - "Abandon all hope, ye who enter!"... http://t.co/6k22a5v

144 - @ClimateCentral Neat. It snowed in the Altacama Desert, the driest desert in the world - http://t.co/4TLB9pm

145 - Supersize Dust Storms Could Become Southwestern Norm - http://t.co/CsSCnEB via @BreakingScience

146 - Is there intelligent life on Planet Earth? http://t.co/Sh3u3gQ


I will add other reasons for optimism, as of today, updated daily, this "Optimist's Diary"

RUI SANTOS DE SOUZA
Brazil, Curitiba, June 25, 2011 - 23h: 42